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Sneakerhead VC

sneakerheadvc.com

A weekly column about company-building, investing and partnering with founders to bring out their best. Click to read Sneakerhead VC, by Phin Barnes, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Tech news / industryEngineering management / careers

’10’15’20’25
Posts
311 from 9 Mar 2009 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (8 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://www.sneakerheadvc.com/feed

2026 8

  1. Got RoTo?
  2. AI gutting what you love about work? Me too.
  3. Natural Value
  4. Raise Less and Build Software
  5. The Foundation Strategy: How the SpaceX IPO Unmasked a Planetary Monopoly
  6. The Best Companies Will Stop Making Software
  7. Systems of Judgment
  8. Where the Sweetest Margins Live in Jensen’s 5-Layer Cake

2025 1

  1. The difficulty with being decisive in our AI world

2024 3

  1. Build in The Bay
  2. Please stop with the first principles
  3. If everyone is an analyst, be an artist.

2023 2

  1. How we partner at TheGP
  2. The risk in your assumptions

2022 6

  1. Sneakerhead x AI
  2. Creative Compute
  3. I just learned The Standard Conversion framework. You should too.
  4. Hot talent in a cold market
  5. The Founder Puzzle
  6. My choice to do the work: Joining The General Partnership

2020 5

  1. Meditation on power and insecurity
  2. Near miss or clear miss?
  3. The 3 VC’s you’ll meet on Monday
  4. A Small Sign of Big Growth for a CEO
  5. Checklist Manifesto

2019 9

  1. I’m thankful for being perfect and you should be too
  2. Your old data could be hiding the secret to Product Market Fit
  3. Zero zeros
  4. Self-confidence is the foundation of focus — to get more done, take time for yourself.
  5. Driving an SUV, Perception of Risk and Learning per $
  6. Minimum Viable Failure
  7. What does success look like?
  8. Are you my next Chief of Staff?
  9. Chasing the feeling of knowing

2018 6

  1. SneakerheadVC on 20 MinuteVC
  2. We’re looking for the next CEO of Dorm Room Fund
  3. We’re looking for the next CEO of Dorm Room Fund
  4. Is it dark inside me?
  5. To achieve your goals be more confident not more disciplined
  6. Just listen

2017 33

  1. If I were an NFL owner here is what I would think about the players’ choice to #takeaknee
  2. Walk The Ridiculous Path
  3. My New Calendar System
  4. Trust your own mind
  5. VC/Founder partnerships and the cycle of destructive deduction and creative induction
  6. I did not see the image in that way — for me it is a strong image of a woman emerging from the…
  7. The one startup debt you can’t pay back
  8. I am suggesting both is the best answer — not do one over the other.
  9. Different symptom. Same disease.
  10. Stock options vs career options
  11. A length of rope
  12. Great cultures are legible, not transparent
  13. Shhhh 4d4a61d44a7
  14. Ode to the VC who passed
  15. Disappointment
  16. Matters of Narrative
  17. Good point.
  18. Fire fighting and company building
  19. If it ain’t broke, keep digging
  20. Who is the CEO?
  21. Celebrate small wins
  22. Grade Inflation
  23. The point about making time to be helpful is right on and one great way to do this is meeting…
  24. The fear is real. I listen.
  25. Work on the company, not in the company
  26. I’m sorry, I can’t
  27. Truth or Victory
  28. Rollercoaster meetings
  29. Luck and my practice of venture capital
  30. Good investor communication is like a management 1-on-1
  31. What are we NOT going to do
  32. Trump Cards and Crossing Lines
  33. Mental framing and word choice

2016 42

  1. baby steps
  2. Break and reset?
  3. What goals did you miss?
  4. Donald Trump could be an American Hero
  5. Process? Process? Not the work. We talking about process?
  6. Imagine the worst to make faster decisions
  7. Make your “team slide” matter
  8. By law, maybe. In reality I fundamentally disagree and there is tons of evidence to the contrary.
  9. My Freedom of Choice
  10. Two Questions for Every Strategy Session
  11. Agree with you here and have struggled with the same fears (admittedly articulated less clearly).
  12. Customer Interviews (a VC point of view)
  13. Great move Kim.
  14. Build right. Not up and to the right.
  15. How to miss your numbers
  16. The 3 things most critical to building a great culture
  17. Do the thing you love. Find a co-founder to do the rest.
  18. Also, does this match your priorities/what you believe your customer will value?
  19. Unlimited Vacation (+ two weeks where the office is closed)
  20. One way to solve a problem
  21. Actually referring to a third group that is a sub-set of the two groups you describe.
  22. Ajko c2d1926bc596
  23. Agree with 1 — it is a generalization to make a point about the trap of exclusively looking for…
  24. The most dangerous person in Silicon Valley
  25. Shoe dog is a great read on brand and company building.
  26. Elegant Management
  27. Mistakes
  28. Support vs. Critique
  29. Want to run great meetings? Learn to pass the mic
  30. Aka “story”
  31. Two questions to guide any startup today, tomorrow and in the future
  32. -General George S Patton Jr.
  33. Counter metric is a great phrase.
  34. To get the best advice you have to know what it looks like
  35. There Is No Finish Line
  36. Call and Response UI/UX design (aka chat bot thought)
  37. Seed Stage CEOs and the sensory deprivation chamber
  38. Why I’m not down to lunch
  39. I wonder this as well and feel like in some cases the chat interface is just an excuse for…
  40. Welcome Hayley. Welcome.
  41. Welcome Hayley. Welcome.
  42. Dorm Room Fund 100

2015 9

  1. Dear startup advisors, you don’t always need to be right, but you have to be solid
  2. 4 steps to finding the sharp edge of the wedge
  3. Does giving other people credit build your confidence? I think so
  4. Does giving other people credit build your confidence? I think so
  5. Growth is not a hack — so can we please stop saying Growth Hacker?
  6. Ro-Sham-Bo startup strategy — the rock, paper, scissors way to make the best decisions for your company
  7. I am a witness to greatness
  8. 100 chances to dent the universe
  9. Domainers and Bitcoiners — Same speculation different decade

2014 15

  1. CEO Confidence Matters
  2. It’s on-campus recruiting season. Are you good enough to ignore the banks and consulting firms?
  3. It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s a company
  4. It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s a company
  5. iPhone 6 design impressions
  6. You suck at multi-tasking — This test proves it in under 1 minute
  7. How to tell if you are not scaling as a CEO
  8. How eating Blue Apron Meals made me 10x more productive at work
  9. Going Home
  10. Being a VC is like watching a car accident
  11. Why don’t VCs say “My bad” more often?
  12. Great collaboration requires miscommunication
  13. How design drives revenue at Google (and how it can for you too)
  14. Saying no is not enough, you have to say no fast
  15. Cooking up a company

2013 26

  1. From touch screen to touch world — welcome to mobile 2.0
  2. Timing is everything (a look at Blockbuster and broadband adoption)
  3. The monster under the bed — Founder fear and gaps in emotional volume
  4. Get your career going up and to the right with the power of compounding growth
  5. To get the most out of your investors, turn them into rubber ducks
  6. Sustaining work (a 250 word hug from Brooklyn Beta)
  7. Student start-ups create an innovators dilemma for MBA programs
  8. Dorm Room Fund is coming to Boston!
  9. Serena Williams is my new favorite athlete (and if you work in the start-up industry she should be yours too)
  10. August is for Building
  11. A start-up is about doing EVERYTHING before you are ready
  12. When your customer calls you dumb, real stupidity is not listening
  13. The ripple effect of student entrepreneurship
  14. MBAs are not a fit for startups…unless they prove it
  15. A Grand welcome to the First Round Community for Grand St.
  16. Product Details Matter — A physical inspiration for digital creation
  17. Test, Validate, Expand — NYC’s newest venture fund is for students by students
  18. The home cooked story of our investment in Blue Apron
  19. Winning is easy if you get everyone to finish
  20. Founders win by creating more moments of truth
  21. 2/3 of internet users want horrible ads
  22. A single question that can guide every decision at a startup
  23. Internet business models are WAY bigger than the internet
  24. In the early days hire for talent not skill
  25. Hats off to the Quirky Blackout and to pushing the absolute limits of every single day we have
  26. Advice for designers who want to be founders

2012 45

  1. A Design+Startup talk on Social Design from Eric Fisher
  2. Joe Caraffa, Marketplace Operations manager at Etsy, talks tools at Hack+Startup
  3. Mike Nolet, founder and CTO of AppNexus talks DevOps at Hack+Startup
  4. The Dorm Room Fund is open for business in Philadelphia
  5. SmartThings and our investment in the Open Physical Graph
  6. A new look at crafting eCommerce for men
  7. Apple Maps proves HTML5 sucks
  8. If you can’t have someone’s full attention, do you want their advice?
  9. Design+Startup: A Chat with Sahil Lavingia, Founder of Gumroad
  10. Announcing Hack+Startup with Facebook
  11. 5 things that help craft products at Square (Beau Smith at Design+Startup)
  12. Designing all the things (Twitter’s Josh Brewer at Design+Startup)
  13. Design+Startup Quick Fire from HotelTonight Design Lead Shawn Borsky
  14. Design + Startup
  15. When you are raising money, never need a yes and never, ever be surprised by a no
  16. Welcoming Sherpaa to the First Round Capital Community
  17. Is your company culture too strong to serve your customers?
  18. Don’t waste your consumer’s attention. Take the time to Design EVERYTHING
  19. Get your game face on and run through the finish line in every meeting to find your greatness
  20. Answer the question, “How can I help?” with First Round’s newest Community member, GiveForward
  21. Honor the assist and great culture will follow
  22. 3 reasons social proof stinks
  23. Build a napkin sketch culture because the cost of failure at your start-up is paid in lost creativity
  24. on average a VC meets an entrepreneur once…until they meet again.
  25. Right now is the best time ever to do what you love
  26. Features touch consumers. Strategies do not.
  27. Just because you can type does not mean you can code
  28. Cloud production AKA Makerbot Prime
  29. What have you designed lately and what does it say about you?
  30. Design your company (not just your product) at Northside June 14th
  31. Find your magic number and focus on it
  32. Cultural Inflection — beware the effect of success
  33. What are you building and what does it do?
  34. Watching the Google auto-complete algorithm at work from a hill in Tuscany
  35. Who cares about the stock price, Zuck should win the Nobel Peace Prize
  36. Here we go!
  37. Mobile is the 99%
  38. The Say/Do Founder Hack: Your company’s health in a simple ratio
  39. product development and finding the bathroom on an airplane
  40. 4 signs of the design mindset (my talk at AgileUX NYC)
  41. Software is about to eat chronic disease and save us $2 Trillion per year
  42. Failure to sync: Time is different for Entrepreneurs
  43. Has your CTO become Dr. No?
  44. All VCs are tools
  45. My New Year’s Resolution: Do Less, Slower

2011 24

  1. Ignite Lean Start-Up NYC
  2. The Tech Stars Mentor Manifesto is great advice for investors as well as mentors
  3. Birchbox is winning with Brand (with a capital B)
  4. Don’t cross the streams…Let me know if you have already spoken to someone else at First Round
  5. The business may be a failure but the entrepreneur is not. Pick them up and pull them back into the community.
  6. The health care revolution will be consumerized
  7. Brand matters. Start-ups should think like a T-shirt company
  8. If you invest in lean start-ups, you better build a platform
  9. The VC product is broken for 99% of founders and I want to fix it, one meeting at a time
  10. Boom or Bubble…(just raise enough money to stay out of trouble)
  11. No more milestones, I mean it
  12. Geek-er-y and narrative
  13. Choosing an investor, the individual and the institution
  14. In this market you grow by Recruiting, not Hiring
  15. A question for the community: Is there no REST in a realtime world?
  16. Judo strategy and our investment in Nodejitsu
  17. Investing in Design
  18. To squeeze more value out of limited resources, compress the innovation stack with (X)aaS
  19. In the war for talent, love is a weapon
  20. MVP > MBA @ HBS and why other business schools should create programs around Verbs, not nouns
  21. Harvard Business School and Deciding to #beafounder
  22. Biohazard: It’s about people not resumés
  23. Motorcycle instincts and start-ups
  24. Community Value

2010 35

  1. Merry Christmas, #beafounder
  2. Forget “surprise and delight” give me the “Damn! Factor”
  3. Changing trains, building teams, moving to NYC
  4. Birchbox is delivering wonderful one month at a time and we are excited to help
  5. Selling Ad Tech (old school audience management)
  6. SkillSlate, efficiency in local markets and my bulldog Barclay
  7. Don’t let perfection get in the way of participation
  8. Soccer Mom killed by audience, data leakage
  9. Deep Simplicity: Making banking suck less
  10. If two R’s is good, three is better. A new SaaS metric: Monthly Recurring Revenue Ramped (MRRR)
  11. “No” hurts. “Maybe” can kill.
  12. Go ahead girl! (build a start-up and make the world a better place)
  13. Learning from Ancient Asian Wisdom
  14. Are you my investor? The only 100% guaranteed accurate test of investor type ever offered for free
  15. Publishers and agencies: Use your people skills to bring brand dollars online or Google will eat your lunch
  16. Punctuality and Ego
  17. How SaaS is killing karaoke and the “entertainment” column in expense accounts everywhere
  18. Anticipation is magic (in product experience)
  19. Effective board meetings in 10 steps (my first Quora inspired post)
  20. Show me the magic (in your product)
  21. Data Farming
  22. “Previum” the evolution of Freemium
  23. Online Privacy Solutions and Creation Vs. Regulation
  24. Cheers to pursuing passion
  25. Stop lean-washing. Save the (start-up) world.
  26. Honor and termsheets
  27. SneakerheadVC logo: the backstory
  28. MVPP: Minimum Viable Product Purchase and the lesson of the first trash talk T’s
  29. Altitude switching and development priorities
  30. In order to grow, just say “No”
  31. Hello, my name is Phin and I am a sneakerhead VC
  32. Rise of the machines (decision making when milliseconds matter)
  33. Before you sign a termsheet, take your VC to the Chiropractor
  34. 2010: the year of “game mechanics”
  35. Junior people in VC are gate keepers who add friction to the system

2009 42

  1. SneakerheadVC Dunkolicious Christmas
  2. NYC: a winning culture and the start-up
  3. Two paths
  4. Building Blocks (and customer love)
  5. The answer to “What if?” (In memory of Greg Kannerstein)
  6. Messaging Matters: a short film that makes my point
  7. Messaging matters: The AND 1 ToChillin
  8. Seeking innovators, not inventors here
  9. Valuable meetings are not “Deal or No Deal”
  10. Monopoly or Infrastructure?
  11. It’s the Lemons, Stupid: Economic theory, Scamville and why everyone should know better
  12. Find and Filter: the path to gourmet content consumption
  13. Nirvana is found in Transparency
  14. Participation drives value
  15. Minimum Viable Product
  16. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 6 — Is it a match?
  17. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 5 — How is the view at the top?
  18. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 4 — How high is the summit?
  19. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 3 — How long will we be climbing?
  20. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 2 — How deep is the hole?
  21. Understanding the questions behind a VC’s questions: Part 1 — What the F is “fit?”
  22. Business cycles matter but shifts in consumer taste matter more
  23. Futility is yelling at the gate agent
  24. Mind the Gap
  25. Learn, Grow, but do not Conform
  26. BackStory
  27. Hyper-Local and Newton’s 3rd Law
  28. EcosystemNYC
  29. @RunningTech
  30. Office Hours and the 10 minute meeting
  31. If you can’t make Office Hours, go for a run…
  32. Fulltime at First Round
  33. Change or Grow… The choice is yours.
  34. Search for love, not a job
  35. First Round Elements @Upenn
  36. Twitter Should Think “Buy” not “Sell”
  37. Lucky Friday the 13th
  38. Melting the Snowball (This is Hot!)
  39. The Snowball Effect
  40. First Round Capital Office Hours NYC
  41. Kanye Karma
  42. General Electric Then, Google Now